.svg)
In Detail
For a run of nights in late July and early August, an ordinary bungalow in Morningside started serving dinner. The Real Life Restaurant was Angel Bay's pop-up burger bistro, its menu drawn entirely from what New Zealanders actually keep in their fridges.
There was real research behind the campaign — a survey of how New Zealanders shop, cook and waste food — so we led with the findings and let the bistro be the proof. A story about leftovers and weeknight dinners that newsrooms could run on merit.
Home cooking expert Jana MacPherson fronted it. We placed her live on TVNZ Breakfast, on RNZ Nights talking through what is actually inside Kiwi fridges, and on Herald NOW with Ryan Bridge — three different audiences inside a single week.
Lifestyle titles got what lifestyle titles need: bookable dates, a set worth photographing, and a reason to care. Urban List, Neat Places, Capsule and Verve all ran it. For the trade press we took a second angle, pitching the build as a marketing story rather than a food one — which landed Campaign Brief and StopPress.
Twenty-one stories, an estimated 1.64 million people reached, and not a negative word among them — for a house in Morningside with a neon sign out the front.
